Tales of catastophe, sex and squalor from the Alpine Underbelly...

Thursday, 30 September 2010

I have spent the past week or so sitting around in different people’s houses with a wide variety of packets of frozen vegetables on my knee. Frozen sweetcorn, I’ve decided, is the most comfy owing to the size and shape of the bits.

It’s amazing how annoyed people get when you raid their freezers and defrost their vegetables without permission, it really is.

This is not some kind of fetish – these are doctor’s orders. The knee has finally been fixed. Strung back together with some bits of sinew, packed in with sawdust and glue and all sellotaped up. It’s very pretty indeed, although if I'm being picky the needlework is a bit shoddy. My Nan will have something to say.

‘Ice and elevate’ said the surgeon when he came to see me the morning after the op. ‘And plenty of rest for the first week’

I beamed at him and lay there scratching myself luxuriantly through the retreating malaise of this most enjoyable morphine and triple anesthetic experience and knowing full well I was planning a massive bender that very weekend. In hindsight this really wasn’t the best plan. And for the last week I have been a full blown insomniac. Unable to keep my eyes open during the day and bouncing of the walls as soon as my head touches the pillow.

So I’m back to hobbling around like an ancient crone and the reverse cowgirl is off the menu once again.

Although I consciously know it’s fixed, at the moment I am suffused with a hideously depressing sense of ‘back-to-square’ one. It’s been an awfully long journey to this day from that fateful moment on that roller when I felt the entire contents of my knee grind itself pestle and mortar style into mush. (I still shudder when I remember it).

Not that I’d change a thing. I’d go through the whole excruciating experience again. Being back in the mountains would be worth it. And nothing affirmed it more than the foul streak of pallid, spineless, flaccid humanity who yelled at me to ‘Get the Fuck out of the way’ because I was limping so slowly up a flight of stairs (avec crutch, splint and a bag over my shoulder) to catch a train yesterday.

I said nothing. But as providence would have it, despite rushing past me and nearly knocking me over, the cunt missed his train, which allowed me the infinite pleasure of tottering to the summit, and then very slowly limping past him while eyeballing him with the most ball-witheringly revolted expression I could muster. It was like pouring acid on a weed. He visibly shrank.

Actually I mostly felt genuine pity for the poor sod. I mean, how shit and miserable and thankless must his life be to yell at a cripple? Clearly, this is what Clapham Junction does to you if you spend too much time there. I won’t be doing so.

Tuesday, 28 September 2010

Human Beings. It's all very nice the way they say that we're able to move beyond our biology and all that... but I have decided I don't really believe we're built for, or in anyway adapted for monogamy. Our attention spans are way to short.

However. I have also come to the conclusion that being in an open relationship is basically all about denial.

Here's the angle: You're both young. He's into you but he needs to feel he can do whatever he wants without restrictions - all men do. And you (in theory) want your freedom too. You also don't want to lose him or be lied to. So you tell him he can shag other ladies as long as he's honest with you about it. And vice versa, naturally.

Winner. He's got free reign to be a big alpha male about town and you don't get treated like the idiot indoors.

I mentioned this theory to a friend recently, and apparently this attitude puts me into the category of 'woman who traps man subversively using freedom'.

Fuck me! You can't win with you people! Listen guys, we give you the freedom to do what you want, bend over backwards to understand and sympathize with the fact you're men and are slaves to your impulses and you can't help wanting to window shop and occasionally dip into the pick and mix... and you still think we're trying to trap you!

Well, and I speak to all men-kind on behalf of my sisters when I say this.....Fuck you!

Now I don't want to oust an uncomfortable truth here that we ladies were keeping to ourselves... but the unspoken fact is this girls:

Your man is most probably completely shit at chatting up birds (and you can probably vouch for this based on your own personal experience). He's also usually too drunk to approach women with any finesse (that's without dribbling on them or suggesting a threesome with their mother by accident) and was on a fucking lucky streak the day he pulled you anyway.

The baboons arse in the room here, is that in normal life, (before you took pity on him/acquired a taste for him), he hardly ever managed to get laid at all...

You on the other hand, being female, can get laid right now if you want. No, seriously. Just go into your local and stand at the bar with a sign that says 'I would like some sex please.' Not only will you get laid. There will be a massive queue around the block. I promise.

Friday, 17 September 2010

Babies. A shit load of Babies. Suddenly they’re everywhere. Where did they come from? Well, obviously I know in the biblical sense, but the transmogrification of many of my friends from fuckhead to family guy crept up on me and no mistake.

Over the years I've become close to many of BB2.1's friends. Having so many older sibling types around has always been lovely, but this unanticipated upshot is also distinctly unnerving. You'd think I'd be broody but I'm not. I'm just terrified. One minute all was calm. Then suddenly I'm being inundated with these cute, gurgling, if not, caterwauling squirmy wormy things. Fortunately everyone knows what a clusterfuck I am. So far no one has asked me to babysit.

I am a rubbish, rubbish Aunt, although deceptively good at the whole making a tit of myself and looking-like-I-know-what-I'm-doing thing: Support the baby's head. Don't feed it chutney, vodka or amphetamines. Try not to swear in front of it so its first word isn't 'Fuck'. But actually I am the least trustworthy person round a baby you'll encounter. Most likely to be heard saying, 'Come along children, help Auntie Emma find her Valium, and you can have one'.

On the subject of inappropriateness, a tip: If, like me, you thought it would be amusing to download GrindR (despite not being a randy homosexual male) and have a good giggle sending wind up messages to unsuspecting benders on the shark when you're bored...make sure you don't lend your phone to your seven year old nephew so he can play games on it.

'Is this a game too??' he asked loudly, waving the loaded application under his (rather conservative) mother's nose. I have never moved so fast. That's a court case just waiting to happen. ‘It’s sort of a game for grown ups, yes sweetheart,’ I said, practically cart wheeling across the kitchen to retrieve it.

And where do you think I get it from, this toxic ineptitude around sprogs? Well, put it this way. The new arrival of baby L, or as BB2.1 likes to call her 'Minime' has basically just been another excuse (as if he needed one) for my Dad to get completely arseholed:

'Why's he so wankered?' BB2.1 asked me when we collected him at 2am on the Tuesday morning she was born.

I was wankered too. I’m just better at hiding it.

The sprogging forth of babies is also a most tiresome excuse for both my brothers to draw endless attention to the fact that they are both proficient in the art of nappy changing thanks to practicing on me when I was a nipper. Apparently nothing has ever been more terrifying than the radioactive puree I could produce. Perhaps that’s it. I was so disgusting I actually managed to put myself off.

Monday, 6 September 2010

This post is dedicated to our dear friend, the Wiley Miss G. We're all thinking of you hun.

'You work harder, work harder, you're told that you must. And you must earn a living. Must earn a crust. And be like everybody else.'

* * * * *

'I'm panicking, I haven't found a job in the ski resort yet'

This was what I said to Skater Boy back in late July.

'No need to panic at this point!' He replied in his usual up-beat, happy-go-lucky tone. 'If you haven't got a job by beginning of September - that's when you start panicking'

Holy shit.

SbH, the jammy little sod, has already secured himself a cushy little number as something called a 'flexi rep' -which basically amounts to selling a few ski passes and swanning around the resort standing in for chalet chefs when they are ill or have displaced some part or another of their anatomy care of an ill-advised icy-mogul field.

So Skater Boy and I applied to work in a private chalet as a 'couple'. Controversial for two reasons: a) you might recall that I made a pit stop under the skanky duvet of Skater Boy on the road to SbH last winter... b) I swore to high heaven I'd never be a chalet girl again.

Anyhow, we were convinced we had it in the bag. Skater boy even had a haircut (cripes!) and wore a shirt (double cripes!) But no. Not even his white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake or my puppy-like enthusiasm could do the trick.

Finding a job up the mountain isn't as easy as it looks, you know. Each company and each job is as odious as the next and there's a whole queue of 18 year olds willing to work for nothing but fudge, jager bombs and a shag hopping up and down going 'pick me! ooooh oooh pick meeee!' ahead of you.

One can of course opt for the increased pay, responsibility and therefore legitimacy of a job like 'resort manager' or 'ski rep' (sounds a lot better when you tell your parents than 'chalet girl' does, particularly when, like me, your chucking what looks like a glittering career in digital marketing up the swanny to go off and be a toilet cleaner). But with such jobs come higher stress and then there's the inevitable 'them and us' situation. Managers have to bollock the 18-year-olds who don't turn up to serve breakfast because they're still off their tits on mephadrome from the night before. No. Bar work is by far the safest bet.

Not to be a whinge pot, but lately one too many people have been trying to piss on my parade. My friends back home seem to have divided themselves into two camps:

Camp 1 tell me that life is 30% fun and 70% graft. That I made a bit of a cluster-fuck of things over the last ten months and that if I go gallivanting off to a dead end ski resort job again this year no fucker's going to dig me out when I come back financially and physically crippled all over again.

Camp 2 look at me with misty-wistful eyes and remark a) how they wished they'd done more than one ski season b) how they wished they'd done a ski season at all c) how despite 'having everything' they are bored.

So here I sit. No ski resort job as yet. One mangled knee, as yet unfixed. Crap all to show for myself. Even if I do get a job in time, according to my friendly knee surgeon, Mr H, I won't be able to ski possibly until March. My knee is still a wobbling outrage. All I know is, I have to go back.

All my ski friends, of course, understand immediately the concept that being in the ski resort not skiing will be far more bearable than being at home not skiing. Camp 1 do not. Why would they? It's like trying to explain the magical fairyland of what-the-fuck-just-happened-here mind expanding awesomeness that is Glastonbury to someone who doesn't take drugs and has never been.

'Why would you want to be there if you can't ski?' They ask.

Well, picture this. I don't get a job in the ski resort. Instead I take some contract work - probably in london - for the winter. Fantastic, a bit of cash coming in.

It's January 11th 2011. I drag my sorry carcass out of bed for the fourth time that week (I'm still living at Dad's because I'm still trying to save). It's 5.45am - I have to leave at 6.15 in order to get the 7am train to get me to London at 8am to get to work by 8.45 on the packed, grimy tube that made me almost suicidal last year. I push the lingering thought that I swore I'd never do this to myself again, that I'm more than this, that by hook or by crook I'd find an out-of-the-ordinary career path, to the back recesses of my mind. I feel a deep sense of doom permeate me to my core.

It's pissing with rain. After a morning spent, clicking, clicking, tapping, clicking, I log on to facebook to cheer myself up and see a post from a seasonaire friend. A picture of her hurling herself off a recently built kicker into the beautiful toothpaste bluebird sky.

'Quick run down Biolay chaps? Then let's head to the Ronnie'

At this point, I rise purposefully from my seat and hurl myself from the train.

Yes, yes. I hear you say. But that little picture you've just illustrated is cold reality for most of the people reading this blog.

I know.

It's not that I think I'm special. Or different. I'm just not ready to accept defeat yet. I'm willing to risk being rootless and unstable at 30, because the safe, sensible alternative fills me with such utter dread. And I'm not big enough, clever enough or mature enough to get over that dread. Sorry.